by Jerold Last
“No, it’s due in about half an hour.”
By then I was right in front of her. I edged a bit over to my left since Barbara would approach her from the right. “Is the usual 6-pack of beer enough for us to bring to the party or should I plan on bringing anything else?”
“Beer is always the right thing to bring. If you’re feeling generous bring a couple of 6-packs,” she answered.
I was aware of Barbara approaching from my right. I flashed a quick look and saw her carrying an “I Love Denali” Tee Shirt as a plausible item for the cashier to have to ring up. “Why don’t you take care of this customer while I look around for a gift for my son?”
I moved a few feet closer to the left edge of Desiree’s counter. Barbara had detoured to the right end of the counter, flashed her badge, and quickly darted behind Desiree and firmly grasped her left wrist.
“Desiree Schultz, you’re under arrest for suspicion of murder.” She droned out the rest of the formula, “You have the right to an attorney.......” as she handcuffed the shocked Lodge employee’s hands behind her. None too gently she examined Desiree for any concealed weapons, didn’t find any, firmly gripped her arm, and started marching her off to the front door.
“You can’t do this!” Desiree sputtered. “Someone has to watch the shop and keep track of the cash.”
“I can do this and you’re going to visit the Anchorage jail for a long stay,” the FBI agent explained. “Why, is there anything you want to tell me?”
Desiree lapsed into a sullen silence.
We went out the front door and picked up Suzanne. The four of us walked over to our cabin with Barbara firmly gripping Desiree’s arm to guide her. Suzanne and I walked a few feet behind Barbara and her prisoner. I whispered to her so Desiree couldn’t hear me. “Steve Schuck’s bus is due in half an hour. Let’s see if Barbara and I can get a twofer this afternoon. Will you be OK by yourself watching Desiree for an hour or so in our cabin while we meet the bus?”
“Sure,” replied Suzanne. “I can certainly handle her one-on-one with my karate skills if I have to. You and Barbara won’t be more than a shout away if anything goes wrong, but it won’t.”
“Barbara played the heavy when she arrested Desiree just now. She told her the charge would be suspicion of murder. You get to be the good cop, Suzanne. See if you can get her talking. As long as she has those handcuffs on, I don’t think she’ll try to escape. If she does try to make a break, restrain her.”
I admitted to myself that I hated to leave Suzanne in a potentially dangerous situation, but she was more than a match for Desiree, even if Desiree wasn’t handcuffed. I knew Suzanne could handle herself in a fight if she had to. But I was going to be a whole lot happier when we had Steve Schuck arrested and both of the prisoners headed for jail.
We took a quick look around the cabin as we entered. The standard furniture included a Queen-sized bed in the bedroom with a powder blue spread decorated with images of grizzly bears and Denali’s twin snow covered peaks. A comfortable sofa and a comfortable chair sat in front of the fireplace in the living room. Two backless stools stood in front of a small breakfast bar off to one side. We made sure that Desiree had an uncomfortable seat on one of the stools with absolutely no back support as she sat glumly in the cabin, and that Suzanne was clearly in charge.
Barbara and I walked over to the creek right in front of the Lodge to wait for the bus. We saw and heard it coming almost exactly on time. It was impossible to recognize the driver through the tinted window, so we walked on over to where the bus had stopped to discharge its passengers pretending to be meeting an incoming tourist.
The passenger door of the bus opened and several park visitors exited stiffly from the bus after the long 93-mile ride they’d just taken. I could clearly see the driver sitting in his elevated seat watching the line of departing tourists scramble down the steps from the half-full bus and head toward the lodge for a late lunch. It was indeed Steve Schuck.
I walked over to the driver’s side window of the bus and rapped on it to attract Schuck’s attention. Everyone else was busy exiting from the bus or walking toward the Lodge so they couldn’t see me on the far side of the big bus. When he looked directly at me I showed him my Baby Glock and motioned for him to dismount with the other passengers. I could see him hesitate for a moment before he realized he couldn’t outrun a bullet.
Schuck merged into the line of descending passengers and exited from the bus. Barbara was there to flash her badge and redirect him away from the bus passengers towards the creek and me. Less than half a minute later he was handcuffed and being read his Miranda Rights.
Immediately after Gretchen finished the formalities, I was urging her and Schuck back towards the cabin. “Sorry to be pushy, Gretchen, but I’m worried about Suzanne. We’ve left her alone with a dangerous criminal a lot longer than I expected we would.”
Less than a minute later we were knocking on the cabin door. Suzanne let us in. A sullen looking Desiree Schultz was sitting on the same uncomfortable stool looking even less happy than she’d been when we left her in the cabin with Suzanne.
“Is everything alright, Suzanne?” I asked as we walked though the door into the room.
“Of course it is, Roger. It just seems to have been a very long time since you left to meet the bus.”
“Has our guest had much to say, Suzanne?” asked Barbara.
“No, she’s been very quiet since you left. The only thing she had to say was to complain her handcuffs hurt her wrists because they were too tight.” There was something there, a fleeting look or mental telepathy, but I sensed Suzanne was lying, perhaps to protect Desiree from her former accomplice.
Barbara spoke to both prisoners. “The way this works is the first one to talk to us gets a lighter sentence when I tell the judge you cooperated fully with the FBI’s investigation. Do either of you want to share anything with us now?”
The bus driver, Steve Schuck, spoke up. “Unless you know how to drive a big bus through the mountain on narrow unpaved roads, you’re going to have a lot of thoroughly pissed off passengers when they find out I’ve been arrested and they’re stranded out here. Is that what you hoped I’d share?”
“No, not exactly. But the good news is your employer will be held financially liable for any expenses the passengers incur, so I suspect they’ll be mad at you, not me.”
Barbara pulled out her cell phone to call Gretchen. She speed dialed the number. Clearly the phone was answered immediately. Our side of the conversation, which was all we could hear, was mostly about logistics.
“When can you get here to collect the two suspects we arrested this afternoon?”
“We’ll see you then. Thanks.”
“They’ll be here in a couple of hours,” Barbara told us. “It shouldn’t take much time after they get here to get these two onto the helicopter so we can all relax. You two might want to pack to go back to Anchorage with us, unless you still think you have business to complete at the Lodge.”
I thought about her offer. I’d had about enough of the Lodge and the people in it, but still owed it to Vincent and the Roberts to see this investigation through to its conclusion. “There are still some questions that need answers, Barbara, including who played the bear. I don’t know whether the answers to that question are here or in Anchorage, but we probably should stay here until we find out.
“You and Gretchen have six prisoners to interrogate. You might be able to get the answers we need from one or more of them. But I suspect there are still a few more arrests to be made, including the killer we want.”
I was well aware of the two prisoners listening carefully to everything we said. They got to hear exactly what I wanted them to hear.
Suzanne and I slipped out of the cabin, leaving Barbara to watch the prisoners. As soon as we were out of hearing distance, I turned to Suzanne. “I hated to leave you alone with a prisoner like that, Suzanne. But you were the only female around here for Desiree to talk to who
wasn’t an FBI agent, and there wasn’t any possibility she would open up and give me or Jason any information. What did you learn from Desiree while you were waiting for us to get back?”
She answered immediately. “Not much we didn’t already know. She’ll cooperate with the FBI in this investigation if they treat her nicely. Desiree realizes she’s in real trouble for something she got into as sort of a lark. The girls who work at the front desk of the Lodge have a lot of time off except during the three meals a day and just after the buses arrive twice a day, when tourists are most likely to buy gifts. One of the girls has to be here all day, while the other has a few hours here and there to go play. They rotate who does the long day and who does the shorter day all through the week.
“She was approached by Steve Schuck, who asked if she was willing to do some hard work to make some more money that would be strictly off the books---no taxes, no benefits, just cash. To make a long story short, she did some hard rock mining and carried some of the enriched gold ore they extracted between the mine and Steve’s bus, which took it out of here and back to the Park entrance. She knew it was illegal, but she was making twice the money by working at what she thought of as a victimless crime. To the best of her knowledge, Cathy wasn’t involved in any part of this. As far as who else did the mining, she told me Steve Schuck, on his days off, and Ed Farrell, the Park Ranger, were the only ones she saw out at the mine while she was digging there. The Ranger seemed to be the one in charge.”
She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and continued. “That’s about it, Roger. Quite frankly, I don’t see any of the three of them, Farrell, Schuck, or Desiree, being smart enough or well organized enough to be our killer. I think someone else set up the mining scam and got the others to do all the work.”
“Thanks, Suzanne. Why don’t you just keep this to yourself for a while so Barbara can take the prisoners back to Anchorage and Desiree can negotiate a plea bargain with Gretchen in return for her testimony if she’s smart.”
Right on cue we heard the familiar thwock, thwock, thwock sound of the helicopter arriving. It landed in a grassy area right in back of the Lodge. Gretchen hopped out, just in time to meet Barbara and her Glock pistol herding the securely handcuffed Desiree and Steve in their direction. “Climb on board,” Gretchen directed her sister and the two prisoners. “I’ll be right with you.”
Gretchen turned towards Suzanne. “Let’s plan on this being a round trip for Barbara and me. We’ll be back as soon as we can and should probably bring Jason with us. Let’s plan on a quiet dinner at the Lodge and a debriefing where we can catch up with each other. OK?”
She handed me a flat package that looked about the right size for a few folded shirts, and was light enough to be just that. “And I brought you a couple of FBI-issue undershirts I’d recommend you both wear for the rest of the time while you’re here. We’ll see you in about four hours, plus or minus a bit.”
The helicopter took off and we were back on our own with some time to kill. We went back to the cabin to check out our unexpected gift.
Gretchen’s present turned out to be matching His-and-Her Kevlar underwear, also known as ‘bulletproof vests’. This was the latest style and much improved over the bulky vests worn by soldiers and by cops on TV shows. I showed Suzanne how to put hers on—basically a white plastic T-Shirt with short sleeves. There wasn’t any FBI insignia on the back, so they looked just like regular T-shirts, except thicker. I wasn’t too optimistic about the Kevlar undershirts stopping a high-powered rifle bullet fired from close range, but they should be able to handle pistol shots and tranquilizer darts.
Suzanne looked at our new undershirts dubiously. “Do you think these will make any difference if The Bear tries to attack us, Roger?”
“I don’t know, Suzanne. But every little bit helps. I never expected either of us would be in any kind of danger when I agreed to check things out for Vincent. I’m sorry to have gotten you into this situation.”
“It’s OK, Roger. I’ll admit I’m scared, but it’s also kind of satisfying to realize that without us nobody would ever have realized the Roberts deaths were anything but a tragic accident. And being scared like this is also sort of exciting when I’m sharing the experience with you.”
I leaned over and gave my wife a long, gentle kiss. She returned the kiss, and suddenly everything felt right.
We both donned cotton flannel shirts over our new FBI undershirts, making them totally invisible, before leaving the cabin, Suzanne in the lead. I lagged behind to lock the door.
Suzanne turned back toward me to say, “Where should we go now, Roger? We have three or four hours to kill before we can expect everybody to be back for dinner.”
I started to answer her when I heard a soft ‘pfffft’ sound from somewhere behind Suzanne, back toward the Lodge or from the edge of the forest west of our cabin. “Ouch, that hurt!” exclaimed Suzanne.
“Hit the deck!” I shouted, starting to run the few steps between us toward her. Suzanne wheeled around to dive forward in my direction, hitting the ground in a ball right in front of me. The feathers of a small dart stuck out of her shirt into the air. I could hear the sound of footsteps crashing through the brush as whoever was lurking around out there and presumably fired the shot ran in the opposite direction from our cabin as fast as they could.
“Lie still while I check you out,” I commanded. A quick look confirmed Suzanne had been shot in the back with a dart similar to one of the tranquilizer darts that had been used to incapacitate the Roberts. The sounds of the escaping ambusher were already fading away as the shooter made good their escape.
I looked closely at what I could see of the dart. Most of it was visible and could clearly be seen sticking out of the flannel shirt Suzanne was wearing. My mind worked rapidly. Worst-case scenario: Suzanne had received a big dose of Immobilon and would be fast asleep in a few seconds. Best-case scenario: The fancy FBI Kevlar vest would have done the job and Suzanne would be fine, with only a small bruise from the impact of the fast moving projectile to show for the experience. In either case my best move was to get her back into the cabin where we’d both be safe in case the killer was still around or if they’d left someone behind to keep us under surveillance until the next opportunity to shoot one of us.
My key was still gripped tightly in hand. I picked Suzanne up and carried her into the cabin, locking the door behind us, laying her on her stomach on the bed. I carefully closed the drapes over the windows so nobody could see what we were doing. Then I removed the dart from her back, noticing the attached small vial of drug had completely emptied from the impact. I pulled her flannel shirt out of her jeans as carefully as I could, then pulled the left arm of the shirt free and flipped the shirt over to her right side. There was a big wet spot staining the Kevlar vest under the pinhole the dart had made. I hoped that accounted for most of the drug dose from the dart.
“Are you having fun, Roger?” Suzanne asked in a strong voice. “I assume the next step is to take off the bulletproof vest and see how deep the needle penetrated the Kevlar. I can do that part.”
She sat up and removed the shirt and vest. There was a red welt but no needle track on line with where the dart had hit.
“How come you didn’t say anything sooner?” I asked. “You scared the heck out of me!”
“I figured you’d want me to play possum,” replied Suzanne. “If you’ve taught me anything about detecting, it’s don’t let the bad guys know anything you don’t have to tell them.”
Suzanne put the bulletproof vest and flannel shirt back on, then lay back on the bed. “OK, Roger, I’m feeling very, very angry at somebody out there. I’d like to shoot them for a change so they could get to feel what it’s like,” she said coldly. “Did we at least learn anything useful from this attempt to shoot me?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” I replied. “There are still some bad guys running around out there who don’t like us, almost certainly including the murderer who killed the R
oberts. I think we should probably just lay low here in the cabin until it’s time for dinner, at which time we can expect some additional help to arrive here. In the meantime, let’s try to forget about murders and murderers for a couple of hours of relative normalcy. I can get caught up on my email and you can work on that research grant to the NIH you’re trying to write. And it’s perfectly OK for you to feel scared or angry, or both, after just being shot!”
Chapter22. Another dinner with the FBI
The five of us sat at a large table for eight in a mostly empty dining room eating a very late dinner at the Lodge. Cathy, now the acting hostess and acting waitress for the depleted staff outside of the kitchen, had placed us at the back of the dining room where we had complete privacy.
Two Bowmans, two Kaufmans, and a Culpepper were eating an appetizer featuring Alaskan King Crab accompanied by an eminently forgettable white wine from Washington State, with grilled salmon and dessert yet to come. The kitchen staff were doing their best to cook and serve like everything was normal, but service was slow and the appetizers clearly had not been cooked or plated by one of America’s Iron Chefs.